The Well-Dressed Window: Curtains At Winterthur

Description

Featuring the curtains of fifty rooms at Winterthur, At the Window is a definitive guide to the design and detailing of window treatments. Today Henry Francis du Pont, the force behind the transformation of Winterthur from a family house to the premier museum of American decorative arts, is recognized, along with Henry Sleeper and Elsie de Wolf, as one of the early leaders of interior design in this country. He assembled his rooms using architectural elements from historic houses along the East Coast and decorated them with historically correct furniture and period colors. His favorite part of the process was the design of the curtains, which offered almost infinite variety in choice of fabric and style.At the Window surveys du Pont's achievement, explaining how the fabrics were selected and their relationship to the overall decoration of the rooms. A special feature of du Pont's obsession was the design of seasonal curtains, which were rotated through the year as lighting and colors shifted with the seasons.Both a history and a guide to design, At the Window is a unique compendium and an invaluable resource for designers and homeowners.

Linda Eaton is Director of Collections and Senior Curator of Textiles at Winterthur and the author of Printed Textiles (Monacelli, 2014). A graduate of the University of Newcastle upon Tyne and the Courtauld Institute of Art, she teaches in the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture and lectures on textiles and textile conservation. At Winterthur she has curated a number of exhibitions including Deceit, Deception & Discovery, This Work in Hand- Philadelphia Needlework from the 18th Century, and Quilts in a Material World.Sandy Brown is principal designer working with Winterthur Design Associates, the museum's interior design firm founded in 1986. She holds a master's degree in interior architecture and design from Drexel University in Philadelphia.Thomas Jayne, founder of Jayne Design Studio and a member of both the AD 100 and the Elle Decor A List, studied American material culture and decorative arts at Winterthur. He is the author of The Finest Rooms in America and American Decoration.